Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [45]
One carat equals ten pounds. Two carats equals twenty pounds. A full three carats equals one hundred and ten pounds. Enough to buy a fleet of bicycles, marry, build a house of baked bricks with a zinc roof.
Our mother’s bride price equalled the price of a one carat diamond. Cash only. On top of which she received a cow which was hers for the milking. Non-returnable. Two country cloths and four double lengths of waxed cotton, one dozen sticks of salt at two shillings each, cowries, rice, cocoa beans, gold and one umbrella, distributed to guests and family: all were listed by the court and added to the debt. To be repaid in full.
Our mother knew enough to know that the people who made money in the gold rush were not the miners, but the ones who sell buckets and spades. And so she buys a three-legged stand and sets herself up in business selling eggs on the roadside.
We buy our eggs for two pennies each, boil them and sell them for five pennies each. A perfect plan except that firewood is not free. Here the trees have all been pulled down to make way for the mines and railways. Firewood sells for fifteen pence a bundle in town, twelve pence a bundle on the road out of town. A dozen eggs equals twentyfour pence, plus fifteen pence firewood equals thirty-nine pence.
Twenty-one pence profit per dozen. And living costs and everything on top.
Not all the eggs are good. Some contain the pale foetuses of baby chicks, others are watery and grey. Each time this happens our profits are reduced. The eggs must be conserved. We do not eat them for lunch. We do not eat anything. We nibble kola nuts to ward off the hunger and thirst just like the men in the pits. And mother sends me on the long trek to buy firewood out of town.
And at the end of more long days than we can bear it is enough. And the end when it comes is marked only by an egg slipping through fumbling fingers and fracturing on the ground. I laugh, because for some reason I think it’s funny. And because we have been fooling around Yaya laughs with me. And so I laugh all the harder to encourage him, and just because I want to. The giggles rise in my chest like bubbles of air under water. I don’t notice the way Yaya’s laugh hovers and bursts. Only vaguely do I hear the sound, like a whistling in the air.
My mother slaps me hard across the face.
I have forgotten what was so funny. It isn’t funny any more. I bend down to try to scoop the egg up. It stares back up at me like a sorry eye, quivering with glutinous tears.
‘Leave it.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ I say as many times and as quickly as I can. And again: ‘I’m sorry.’ Because I am: deeply, desperately, suddenly. Frightened faces, Yaya’s and mine. No pride, no urge to sulk or seek refuge in swaggers.
‘And you think that’s enough,’ my mother says, ‘just like that? You say you’re sorry?’
‘But I am sorry.’ My mother looks at me. Her face is empty.
‘Well Serah, sometimes sorry isn’t enough.’
A gecko, hanging in the crevice between the ceiling and the wall, turns its head and blinks as if in disbelief.
The next morning a line of ants trails across the floor, up the legs of the bed, across the mattress, up the wall and through the window, carrying away grains of sleep and dead skin.
My mother, curled up on her rented cot, weeps. I clutch her and cry too. I hurt her hurt. I grieve her grief. Yaya sits on the end of the bed, leans over and places his head on her legs, curls up there awkwardly grasping her calves. And the bad feeling settles itself over us like a blanket.
Hours later I sit up straight and watch my mother as she sleeps. She sleeps on her side with one arm bent beneath her head, the other stiff and straight, trapped under her body. Thinner now, the bones have crept to the surface. A web of cracks in her heels, outlined with dirt. In the dark cups beneath her eyes, a sheen of sweat and oil.
Behind her shoulder is a tiny, keloid scar with